WWE License Possibly Moved From One Abusive Spouse to the Next

"When it comes to wrestling games, it is difficult sometimes not to be alarmist or a bit heavy-handed when it comes to talking about them. Maybe that just comes with the territory as the genre at one time was chock-full of quality titles (involving a lot of importing, mind you) to only having very few options to choose from." | Explosion.com
(2K Games, PC, PS3, Wii, WWE 13, WWE '14, Xbox, Xbox 360)

I personally believe 2K will raise the bar on WWE games and might have pushed whoever else that bid on WWE games into seeking the TNA license. So its not really a bad thing to see this happen if we see some competition again. That is my hope anyway.

I do wonder if WWE 14 will show up in 2013. If so we might see Yuke's developing it, but WWE 15 could be entirely different and without Yukes. It should be interesting to see what happens.

It's still not clear if Yukes will continue 'working' on WWE '14 or what.

Yukes is in a really precarious position right now and losing this license will probably sink them.

What's funny is Yukes have made some wrestling games outside of the WWE license within the past ten years and they've really been pretty good games, not great, but better than a lot of the WWE offerings.

I really do wonder if most of the restrictions come from WWE and not what the developer wants to bring to the table.

That will never happen because WWE doesn't want them to. It's WWE's discretion as to who makes that call and unless they just hated THQ then they won't let Take Two take a year off.

So that means that Yukes will probably have to stay on or license out their engine to 2K until 2K can get their own engine up and running in about 2 or 3 years. I know for a fact that Yukes were already working on the next gen engine and that it was built from the ground up so that's a great foundation for them to start at 2K if they buy that engine out and the assets that go with it and employ the key team members from WWE games at THQ to help design and keep things running smoothly.

My biggest concern is that there may be no true wrestling fans at 2K enough to make a great game. I am wishing for the best though.

Of course Yukes is continuing to work on it. Remember THQ said that no matter what happens that the games they currently had planned out for 2013's fiscal year were going to get released. It will release under the 2K banner, of course, and then after that I don't know if 2K will keep Yukes on as a dev and the team at THQ as a design team or just use their own internal teams for design/development or what.

Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis. I actually enjoyed that game. It was just a fun experiment for Rockstar. And if I was a dev and I had a chance to work on a WWE game, the boy in me would reawaken and I'd definitely take it on. Maybe Rockstar would want a project like this

EA MMA was arguably way ahead of the UFC games that THQ/Yukes did. EA does a good job of finding people passionate about the topic to put together their games. I knew a few people on the EA MMA team and they are diehard MMA fans and it showed in the final product.

EA MMA got largely panned @dvewish. They are NOT good at making MMA games and they better hope that THQ lets them borrow their engine for their next UFC game or they are going to tank it just like they did with their own MMA game.

Yes I did play it. What does being a fan of UFC or general MMA have to do with counterintuitive controls? The controls SUCKED in that game. It wasn't FUN at all. Sometimes counterintuitive controls work for the player and sometimes they don't, EA didn't get it right in my opinion and THQ did with their UFC game. And it's a really ignorant thing to say that just because you're a UFC or WWE fan you probably don't know anything outside of those two when plenty of fans of both watch Bellator or Pride or TNA or ROH.

The return of some old stuff that disappeared through time would be nice though.

Custom Championships GM Mode Working for the stats of your CAW(Can't stand they let everybody max their stats in the end just with creation) More access to backstage areas & ringside Less limitation of movesets when fighting backstage Weapon finisher selection(Could choose what finisher you wanted with chairs in Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain. Only had a few options but neat none the less.)

I'd also hope they do keep the customization options that are there like Create An Arena & Create A Finisher. While the newest entries of the WWE series haven't been exactly great a lot of the create stuff has been a nice addition and something people wanted for some time.